In May of 1992, Jack Collins was a church planter in Spokane, Washington, with a doctorate, a new baby, a freshly decorated house, and a congregation that was ready to particularize and call a pastor. Then Bob Yarbrough called to invite him to apply for an open faculty position at Covenant Theological Seminary. 

When Collins sought the wisdom of trusted friends, they all encouraged him to pursue the opportunity at Covenant. In January of 1993, Collins began a faculty position at Covenant from which he will retire in June. Over the course of those 32 years, he has not only taught many future PCA pastors, he also served on the PCA’s Creation Study Committee, and as the Old Testament chairman for the English Standard Version translation committee. 

As one of his former students, I talked with Collins about how Covenant and its students have changed over the years, the current needs in theological education, and Collins’ hopes for the future of Covenant and the PCA. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You arrived at Covenant in the early 1990s. What sticks out in your memory about what Covenant was like when you arrived? 

The thing I remember most is that we were a mostly unknown faculty, and yet we were an excellent team. The model that I came to use for us was the “No Name Defense” from the NFL. Even if people didn’t know who we were, we felt like we were able to do our task with a level of excellence, working as a team. Organizationally, we were very much like a “mom and pop” store. There wasn’t a lot of administration. And that was right at the beginning of when we had rapid growth throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. During the 1990s, we ballooned as far as enrollment. In the 2000s, there were lots of challenges as far as figuring out administrative organization. 

As you think back over those years, what are some of the ways that Covenant has shaped you?

The atmosphere that was established here back in those early days of a focus on God’s grace as our motivation and source of enabling for our lives of faithfulness was very important. We were seeking to articulate a conventional Reformed notion of divine grace and to distinguish that from an Antinomian perspective because we were very concerned with how people live. That infused everything that we did, and I think helpfully so. 

Also, it was an environment with colleagues where we were interested in our own spiritual and intellectual growth. It might be a surprise to some people, but you don’t come out of a PhD program knowing everything about your particular subject. But you are well prepared to grow if you’re willing to. I’ve learned a lot through interacting with my colleagues about the ways in which they carried out their disciplines. I’m very grateful for my colleagues and for their challenge, their interaction, and their encouragement.

Related to the dynamics in the classroom, what are some of the noticeable ways that the students at Covenant have changed over the years?

When I started, that was an era in which the average age of the students was a little bit higher. Like me, it was people going to seminary for a second career. I worked for several years as an engineer before seminary. Then during the ‘90s, with our blossoming enrollment, our average age went down, with more students directly out of college. During our boom times, I think the academic preparation of the students was very strong, although they varied a lot as far as how well they knew the Bible. 

And then as we get along, now into the 2020s, people have been through COVID. They might have done their degree during COVID restrictions, and we’ve seen the long-term impact on young people, as far as academic preparation, has not been good. I think it takes a lot more effort on the part of students, a lot more deliberation, because some of those study habits haven’t been instilled in them. But I think that eagerness is still there. Everybody in education says this: We have challenges to make sure that we can provide an attractiveness to serious academic effort. 

Back in the 1990s, I think one of our challenges was that people suspected that academics and piety were at odds with each other. We have always sought to make sure that we’re not going to compromise on either of those. And in different eras, we’ve had to make the case for one or the other. I suppose we’ve realized as well, as we go on, it’s not just academics and piety, but also churchmanship. 

And then the PCA has been through its own growing pains. The PCA was still fairly young when I started here. It was 20 years old from the actual PCA beginnings and then only about a decade since the joining and receiving with the RPCES. And we’ve been through our controversies. I would say that young people look at those controversies, and if they’re sensitive, they wonder, “Why do people carry on about these things in these ways?” The issues are important, and we have to talk about why we have to work these things out. But they do, in some cases, end up putting people off. They wonder “Why do people argue the way that they do?”

For you and the rest of the faculty, what has it looked like to try to adapt to the way that students have changed? As you teach the same courses over and over, what are some of the challenges in terms of always reading and responding to what you’re experiencing in the classroom? 

I think it’s just important to talk to people. To talk to your neighbors to find out where they are, to talk to your kids, to talk to other people in church. It’s really important for people in seminary education in particular to make sure that we’re not just talking to one another. And not just talking to the elites in our denomination, but talking to ordinary folk and finding out where they are.

 But of course, you realize that it’s almost impossible to make any meaningful generalizations, because everybody’s at a different place. And you have to have your head on straight because, especially nowadays that we have social media, you get issues that are presented with a very high level of heat and you have to decide, “Okay, is that worth spending my time on? Is that going to be an important character-shaping question two months from now, let alone two years from now?”

Preparing for this interview gave me the opportunity to reflect on my own experience taking some of your classes. One thing I remember about my classes with you was the unique way you would handle a student who succumbed to the temptation of trying to “show up” a professor. How did you see those interactions as part of the overall formation of future pastors?

Well, my overall thought is you have to have reasons for the positions that you take. And those reasons need to be good reasons. And the only way you find out whether they’re good reasons is when you expose them to critique. I’m willing to expose my reasons to critique, and I want everyone else to be willing to expose their own reasons to critique, and then to be intellectually honest about whether your position is a solid one or not. 

It is harmful to be personally invested, in terms of one’s ego, in a position because that makes you less willing to change your mind when you’re shown to be wrong. Tenacity as such is a good thing, but if it’s motivated by misplaced attachments, whether it’s ego or just personal loyalty, then I think it harms the person. it also diminishes the quality of a person’s ministry. 

I would love a ministry in which we are willing, to use the terms that you would have learned in school in math classes, “to show your work.” We should treat God’s people with respect by showing them why we take the position that we do. They might not know all the details of the Hebrew and the Greek, but we can make an effort to show them, “Okay, here’s how I came to this position. And here’s why I want you to hold this position as well.”

Hace Cargo is assistant pastor of Ponce Church in Atlanta.